Your favorite medium-long range cruise altitude
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After 9 months and 240 legs into a 285 leg Starship world tour, touching down in virtually every country with an airport and totalling almost 90,000 nm so far, I've kind of settled on FL175 as the best of most worlds. While the fuel burn is higher than above FL300, I find you get a better view of the scenery, and you can easily get to a TAS of 315 with 93% torque and just under 800 degrees ITT. Other than the fuel burn, this feels like the sweet spot.
What are others doing in medium-long range cruise?
(PS I use no GNSS, just VOR hopping or VLF/Omega only)
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And I was thinking my 100 hours in the Starship are impressive
Lately I'm almost always checking the winds at altitude with simbrief for the route. Can gain as much as 25% time/fuel savings by avoiding flight levels with strong headwinds. It's not like with the Learjet that cruises with 500 kts GS, here every 50kts of headwind takes a sizable % chunk out of the GS
When selecting the altitude I'm less interested in the views as I find there isn't much difference above 15.000 AGL for me. And besides, for views I have my world tour in the Baron that I'm mostly doing like 4k AGL and then the views are really great.
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And I was thinking my 100 hours in the Starship are impressive
Lately I'm almost always checking the winds at altitude with simbrief for the route. Can gain as much as 25% time/fuel savings by avoiding flight levels with strong headwinds. It's not like with the Learjet that cruises with 500 kts GS, here every 50kts of headwind takes a sizable % chunk out of the GS
When selecting the altitude I'm less interested in the views as I find there isn't much difference above 15.000 AGL for me. And besides, for views I have my world tour in the Baron that I'm mostly doing like 4k AGL and then the views are really great.
@Tadeus72 said in Your favorite medium-long range cruise altitude:
Lately I'm almost always checking the winds at altitude with simbrief for the route. Can gain as much as 25% time/fuel savings by avoiding flight levels with strong headwinds.
Thanks for the tip, I will give that a try. The higher alts are great in the more mountainous regions in Southern/Eastern Europe and SE Asia. I'll likely be lower in the States once I make my way back there.
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@Tadeus72 said in Your favorite medium-long range cruise altitude:
Lately I'm almost always checking the winds at altitude with simbrief for the route. Can gain as much as 25% time/fuel savings by avoiding flight levels with strong headwinds.
Thanks for the tip, I will give that a try. The higher alts are great in the more mountainous regions in Southern/Eastern Europe and SE Asia. I'll likely be lower in the States once I make my way back there.
But the "scenery at altitude" topic is interesting and also something I'm deeply considering during my longer tours, might depend on the settings (for me mostly HIGH and 170 LOD) and with this:
~4000 AGL - You see all of the objects, trees and the subtle changes in the topography, best experience.
~8000-15000 AGL - Good for very low detail areas like some of the Amazonas or South Africa where the textures are hideous or missing when too near.
15K-25K - A strange area where MSFS already starts loading lower quality/mid-height textures, but you are close enough to see the imperfections.
over 25K the textures are lower quality, but you are far enough for them to actually start look good. As a downside everything is getting more blueish, which is accurate but makes the terrain look less nice + bigger chance of having it covered up by cloud layers.
